Giving Customers The Experiences They Crave: Connecting Prospects with Relevant LOCAL Luxury Experiences

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“So, what is there to do in this town?”

Whether you’re a tourist, business traveller, or just a local looking to go out on the town and have a good time, how many times have you asked that of either a hotel clerk or cab driver or anyone who happened to be handy? Then, once you have your recommendations, you’d search the web in an attempt to determine for yourself whether they’re a good fit for you and your style.

Then, if you elected to pursue these recommendations, you’d be saddled with the process of actually making your ultimate night on the town happen:

Should I make reservations? What time is the show? How can I get a good seat? What if I want a VIP experience? … The logistics go on and on.

While this is a tried and true method of finding something to do in an unfamiliar city or turning over a new leaf if you live in a large city and are looking for variety, it’s a tedious process that requires multiple steps with no guarantee of a good time in the end.

Who has time for that?

That’s the thinking behind up and coming concierge sites like Way.com. Whether you’re looking to book an entire night of activities including an overnight stay, or you simply want to catch a cab, these sites let you pull everything together in just a few clicks. It’s the ultimate timesaver for business travellers, vacationers or locals who have neither the time nor the inclination to do it themselves.

What these people are looking for is an easy, breezy way to plan their activities that doesn’t involve a lot of phone calls or hopping from website to website, and Way.com gives them exactly what they want. The name actually stands for “What’s Around You,” and as it implies, the site gives users a snapshot of what’s locally available in their chosen category and then allows them to book their tickets or claim their reservation without ever leaving the site.

Of course, this kind of luxury experience can only succeed if a plethora of businesses choose to partner with the concierge site. Way.com makes this as easy and secure as possible by allowing businesses to create a profile at no cost but requiring them to verify their identity through social networks. It’s an effective way of ensuring that only well-respected businesses are featured on the site while making it as simple and profitable as possible for a business to choose to form a relationship with Way.com.

If the paradigm works as it should, consumers will find themselves with the best of both worlds; at-a-glance access to the hottest businesses or experiences in town with the ability to book these activities with a minimum of fuss. Way.com even offers rewards in the form of “Way bucks”; one for every dollar spent on the site.

One of the pitfalls faced by these sites is that consumers – especially consumers in search of luxury experiences – can be a fickle bunch. If something doesn’t go right, the whole world is going to hear about it. Or in the words of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, " Make customers unhappy in the physical world and they will tell it to six people but make a customer unhappy online, and they will tell it to six thousand people". With that in mind, operators of these sites in each city need to be extremely careful that the services they’re offering are truly superior and that the booking process goes off without a hitch. As long as they can avoid potentially reputation-damaging snafus, the future for concierge sites such as Way.com is bright indeed.

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